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Friday, April 7, 2017

A Birthday Giveaway and a Blog Break

Let me start by saying it is not my birthday today as the title of this blogpost might have made you believe. My birthday is April 11 and it has been a personal tradition to do a giveaway for you all at that time, but I will not be here on my birthday which leads me to the second part of the title of my blogpost, namely that there will be a blog break.

Let me start with the important stuff: the giveaway.
It's always a bit of a challenge to find something interesting to give away. There have been years I made something, years I bought something and years I ordered something and had it directly shipped to the winner. I think mostly my birthday giveaways have been about the things that fascinated me at the time.

Now I have been praising the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbooks on and off on this blog lately. Mostly because they are perfect for people like me, and by that I mean people who find it hard to just stick to one medium. If you like to switch between pencils, paint, markers, mixed media and everything in between in one book, then Seawhite is the one to get.

If you are just a watercolour painter, then please get a 'real' watercolour book. If you are a sketch artist, then please get a good drawing paper. If you like collage and acrylic, you might like to get one of those mixed media papers.
But if for you, like me, the world of art supplies is like a banquet that you cannot possibly choose only one course from, then get something like the Seawhite paper. By this I just want to say that the books aren't perfect, they are just really well suited for me.

Their books come in different formats of which the square big and thick ones are my favorite. Unfortunately they would also cost a fortune to ship around the world, so I decided on something a bit simpler, namely their Eco Sketchbooks.

These simple cahier style sketchbooks have craft covers and 32 pages of paper each. They are staple bound and come in three sizes (as far as I know): A6, A5 and A4. They should be easier to ship in a regular envelope and that way I can make this giveaway available to everyone that wants to join.

What can you win? Well, basically the above photograph! I will give away one of each size sketchbook, so you will get three sketchbooks in one giveaway! How cool is that?

There's only two things you have to do to be in the draw:
1) Comment that you want to win so I can put your name on the list.
2) Check back here in two weeks to see if you have won.

That's it. I will draw a winner on Friday the 21st of April. The winner will then have another week to contact me either through the contact form in the side bar or by mailing me directly at c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl. If the winner has not contacted me before the 28th of April I will draw another winner. Those are the rules and I'm sticking by them!

Now for the second part of the post: the blog break.
I will be away from this here blog until the draw on the 21st. This is because I'm not only giving away something to you for my birthday, but to myself as well, namely a vacation to the south of the Netherlands to a beautiful place called Valkenburg. I will be there a little over a week mostly walking and photographing until I drop. You know, the way I spend all my vacations! ;-)

I know, I know... my giveaway to myself is way more generous than the one I'm giving to you, but at least you can count on some interesting slide shows of a whole different region of my country when I get back.

I will only be there for a little over a week, but right after my vacation I have to get back to full work days and there won't be time to do blogposts, so I might as well just take the full two weeks off from the blog and save myself a lot of stress.

And that's all I have to say today. I hope I will make someone happy with this giveaway. I hope my vacation will be wonderful. I hope my birthday in the south will be interesting. I hope those of you who celebrate Easter have a blessed time and I hope to find you all here in two weeks, alive and happy.

9 comments:

Oh Am I the first one to comment ?? Now I feel a bit greedy ..but it's such a nice geste of you to give away a present for YOUR birthday and it looks an interesting gift to get so... yes I love to be part of the game . My birthday wish will enter your postbox soon ... wish you already a wonderfull vacation !!

hello...me again. I click on and read/view your blog every post. (I usually comment if there is a cat in the game)...And, like everyone else who will comment, I would love to win the lovely, blank, inviting, excitingly blank-pages books!! Thank you so much for the chance to win :o)

What a lovely giveaway!! I would love to win it! Your vacation sounds really lovely, especially because I will get to see lots of bits of it during the weeks and months after you return! Wishing you a very happy birthday, Caatje, may all of your wishes be fulfilled in a wonderful way.

patricia welch part 2...I see that I used "blank" twice in my description of the lovely books. Yes, blank. twice. I think my head is also a bit "blank" today. That is strange, because I just had a cup of coffee and that usually changes the "blank" to just "fuzzy"..maybe I was looking for a cat picture? I seem to relate an awful lot to cats. Come to think of it, most of my cats are sort of "blank" too, quite often. Maybe I just need a nap.

Dear Caatje, thank you for offering these nice sketchbooks. I hope I am lucky to win them. You are a such a lovely person. I hope you had a really nice birthday and vacation. Good luck to everyone! Mary